vehicle of interest. the word vehicle perhaps indicating it may have been a drive by shooting. we'll bring you more information on tonight's information at the obama's field office in it's about time governor romney takes some responsibility. >> the vice president keeps the hits coming after his knockout debate with paul ryan.

more than 51 million people watched the vice presidential debate. a post-debate poll released this afternoon from reuters found that 42% thought joe biden won the debate.

35% said paul ryan and 23% were not sure. rush limbaugh is sure. he knows exactly who to blame for those poll results showing joe biden winning. >> i you had told you it was in the card and preedictable ryan knew it. it isn't an excuse. you can get mad and say it is unfair but everybody else thought it was unfair and ruined. everybody thought it was a stacked deck. some of you may wish that ryan would have been feistier and not let him run all over him. my guess is he doesn't debate much. let biden be who we know he is going to be and realize you are in a two against one situation. >> nait nate silver forecast on president obama will win 283 and

mitt romney will win 285 and. joining me are ezra klein and crystal ball. rush's job, is to counsel the depressed after last night's debate. what to you make of his raddics, the unfair referee argument? i'm having trouble thinking of where she jumped in there to help joe biden. >> here's the other thing. the winning team doesn't complain about the refs. he actually seemed to me a little dispirited in the clip you played. not only do conservatives feel ryan wasn't aggressive enough that he didn't push the point enough but they expected him to wipe the floor with joe biden. they have elevated him so far in their mind they thought it was going to be a gimme. and i think they are dispirited

for ryan himself who many hoped he would be the future in 2016 or 2020 for the republican party. >> ezra, you know paul ryan. you know that paul ryan's experience in the house does not include free-form debating. in the senate they have real debate on the floor and things go back and forth without moderators and it is real in the house it is a soviet constitution where one side doesn't have to talk to the other side or take real challenges from the other side. >> i thought that ryan did for ryan a fairly good job. he stood up and if you agreed with him you probably thought he won the debate. the problem is joe biden is a good debater. a six-term u.s. senator, the sixth youngestist senator ever elected to the body. vice president in 2008 largely on the strength of his debating performances. not like he won a bunch of primary and a funny thing happens with joe biden in

between where people got this onion inflected impression of him as a guy washing his transam in the white house parking lot and what biden is about at and what he is unable to counter is he wields authority well. i have known bb for 35 years. i was best friends and in the room and that for a guy that looks even younger than he is like ryan was devastating. >> let's listen to joe biden talking about romney's 47%. >> these are the folks who talk about 47% of the american people being unwilling to take responsibility. 82% of them pay their payroll taxes and other taxes and at an effective rate higher than romney pays his taxes. over 10% of them are senior citizens on social security. the rest are disabled vets and veterans and military personnel fighting now. that's the 47%.

the 47%, this nation depends on to build this country. folks, it's about time governor romney takes some responsibility. [ cheers and applause ] take some responsibility to help the american people, the middle class. instead of lining up to sign a pledge to a guy named grover in order kwis. >> ezra, i have to say for me one of my favorite moments in the debate was with him pointing out theffective rate romney pays compared to what other people in the real world pay. i'm not sure how many people jumped on that a as their favorite moment but. >> you and me, lawrence. >> but biden is finding more effective ways of isolating that romney tax return 14% number. >> it wasn't just that. biden i thought actually figured out what obama didn't figure out a week before which is how to deal with the ryan/romney ticket on taxes, medicare and social

security. the strategy, thus far has been to trap you in thickets of ambiguity. you can't say it is 5 trillion because we haven't told you how we will pay for it. what biden said over and over is these guys have a voucher plan. ryan supported privatization and who do you trust? he did a very good job. as he got in to details on the tax rate of when it began to get too weedy stepping out and saying just before you tune out, america, just think of the choice you are being offered here. these are not equal parties with equal histories and the fak that paul ryan says his plan, his medicare plan from 2012 is more modern than the plan from 2011, he's still the guy with the plan in 2011 that dissolved traditional fee for service medicare and replaced it entirely with private plans. >> my favorite 20th century rely about the voucher is him saying

it is a piece of paper you get in the mailbox. i get vouchers for discounts at stores every day in my e-mail. there's no piece of paper involved. >> finally he explained the difference. >> keep the postal service alive. >> there you go. >> crystal, the 47% is, seems to be biden's business. he seems to be the one that goes after that effectively. it seems to me there is a special opportunity in that, in the romney 14% of income tax for the president and his debates to simply say, on this deduction side of the romney tax idea, which they refused to specify. >> right. >> governor romney, tell me the biggest tax deduction on your tax return that you are willing to eliminate in order to fund your tax cut. >> that would be -- >> i mean, this guy is using the biggest deductions that exist in the code. >> that's right.

that would be devastating. obviously he can't answer the carried interest deduction or changing the capital gains rate. that would be a devastating question. the thing that i think that the president and biden have done very well with 47% is when those comments first came out, a lot of people said, you know what, i don't think it is going to be a big deal because a lot of folks don't think they are in the 47%. they look down and think those are a bunch of moochers. the president and vice president have made it very real who they are talking about in those 47%. that that is your mother, your grandmother, your neighbors, people who serve in our military. so i think they have done an excellent job at humanizing that. >> the last time i saw you was at 2:00 p.m. at la guardia airport went we landed from kentucky. as i understand it you do a live show at 3:00 p.m. in this building. >> that happens. >> did you do it. >> i was here and had makeup and

hair done. >> thank you boft for joining me tonight. >> thank you, lawrence. coming up, howard dean and simone campbell will join me on mitt romney's latest statements about how easy it is to stay healthy without health insurance. and in the "rewrite" what the west wing taught the presidential debate commission of how we need to rewrite the rules of presidential debates. and later, the borat of the iowa caucuses. an actor who tricked the candidates in to sharing real moments with her. that's coming up. many people are struggling with issues related to mental health.

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coming up, what does borat have to do with the presidential campaign? he may have inspired a brilliant performance by an actress who lured the republican presidential candidates this year in to sharing some real moments with her.

and next, mitt romney continues to say that sick people won't die just because they don't have health insurance. howard dean and sister simone campbell will join me next. ♪ chances are, you're not made of money, so don't overpay for motorcycle insurance. geico, see how much you could save.

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if it's not a problem for anyone. wednesday, romney told the editorial board of the columbus dispatch, we don't have a setting across this country where if you don't have insurance we just say to you tough luck. you are going to die when you have your heart attack. no, you go to the hospital. you get treated. you get care. and it's paid for even by charity, by the government or the hospital. we don't have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don't have insurance. joining me now is sister simone campbell from the catholic social justice lobby and former chairman of the national committee howard dean. sister simone, i can see out of the corner of your eye you are shaking your head when i was reading mitt romney's statement there about just what you don't have to worry about if you don't have health insurance. >> absolutely. he is totally out of touch with

the reality that it means for real people in our country. on wednesday, we heard the story of mark ret kitslor who died because she couldn't afford senior and didn't have shelt insurance and she knew she was sick and stayed in her apartment until she couldn't get to the door and finally someone picked her up and took her to emergency and she had stage four cancer and died from a cancer that was untreatable at that point. it could have been prevented. it was wrong. people die if you don't have access to care. >> governor dean, i want to listen to a piece of mitt romney speaking back in 2006. a couple of weeks after signing the massachusetts health care law where he clearly knew better and was willing to say so. let's listen to this. there ought to be enough money to help people get insurance because an insured individual has a better chance of having an

excellent medical experience than not. they are more likely to go to a clickic to be evaluated and get treatment opposed to showing up at the emergency room where the treatment is more expensive and less effective than if they got preventative and primary care. >> gfr dean, what changed for governor romney in six years? he's running for president with a conservative base. this is a guy that doesn't appear to have too many inner principals. they are totally out of touch with what goes on. suppose he's right and you get to the hospital and you have a heart attack and you have no insurance. the government does not pick that up. neither does the charity. you know who picks it up, the bill collection agency gets a call and they harass you for three or four years until you g this to bankruptcy or settle with them for a great portion of what you are worth. it is another example of how the republicans have no idea what it is like to be somebody who doesn't have an elevator for

their car in their garage. >> let's watch this video the obama campaign released that tells the kind of story that mitt romney is now ignoring. >> when i was 17, my dad got sick. he got the flu. it's not a huge deal when you get the flu, but it didn't go away. i told him you should go to the doctor. he's like i can't. i can't afford it. i don't have insurance. he didn't have health insurance because he was laid off. his kidneys failed and he had a heart attack. i feel like if he had health insurance, he would still be here. >> sister simone, we all know people who don't go to the doctor because they don't have health insurance, have issues they are worried about, that they are thinking about and they do not go. this is a reality. >> it is an absolute reality. what we know during testimony for the passage of the affordable care act is people get sicker when they do go to the hospital finally because

they are so democrramatically s. it is often invasive, long hospitalization is required and then they are bankrupt as the governor says. it is the wrong way forward. that's why the affordable care act is so critical for full implementation so that people in our nation, especially those who live on the economic margins who don't get health care through their employers they have coverage. it is essential for us as a nation. >> as a politician analyzing another politician, what do you think is going on here with mitt romney? when i look at him in 2006 and the work he did to pass the law in massachusetts. that clearly had to be someone who understood why he was doing that, there was an societial and individual need for that kind of program to fill in the gaps in the system. what he is saying now is the part that feels hollow to me that this is just what he needs

to do at this moment in this candidacy. >> lawrence, look at the presidential debate. i did not think that obama lost that debate. i thought it was a tie. i thought romney presented him very well. but he had three pentagons on immigration that week alone. he had two positions on his tax cut is that week alone. this is a guy who will say anything he has to say to become the president of the united states and he did a good job of saying these things, but the trouble is there's four weeks to go and you can't go responsible publication that i know of who has said that mitt romney's tax plan adds up, for example. they're totally out of touch with middle class americans and they don't appear to have any plans that aren't completely dependent on however, whatever they have to say to get votes. >> i completely on the so-called scoring of the presidential debate. i can't possibly see how you score a debate a victory by if someone who is just lying their way through it. sister quickly before we go.

it was for me an odd question in the debate last night considering it a historic event that we have two catholic candidates. in a country where catholicism is the single largest denomination exists in the country. i don't know where the surprise should come from. that was used as an entry to a question about abortion. i personally would have preferred to just see the question asked without any preface stuff about people's religious affiliation. >> there was a large windup to the question. i would have liked to see the question much more about the pro life question which includes health care, how do we feed our people, how are folks taken care of way beyond birth to natural death. how are we a society, how are we the people caring for all of our citizens. >> sister simone campbell, governor howard dean. thank you for joining me tonight. >> thank you. >> thank you. coming up, why the rules of presidential debates need to be changed. they've changed a lot already

but there's more to do. and, did borat inspire an actress who went out during the iowa caucus us and managed to have some real encounters with the real republican presidential candidates? that's coming up. approve this message. "i'm not in favor of a $5 trillion tax cut. that's not my plan." mitchell: "the nonpartisan tax policy center concluded that mitt romney's tax plan would cost $4.8 trillion over 10 years." vo: why won't romney level with us about his tax plan, which gives the wealthy huge new tax breaks? because according to experts, he'd have to raise taxes on the middle class - or increase the deficit to pay for it. if we can't trust him here... how could we ever trust him here? when you take a closer look... ...at the best schools in the world... ...you see they all have something very interesting in common. they have teachers... ...with a deeper knowledge of their subjects.

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there is outrage tonight in pakistan, outrage we should all welcome over the attempted

assassination by the taliban of a 14-year-old girl simply because she wanted an education. because she wanted an education for herself and other girls like her. we will update you on her medical condition and bring you the latest from pakistan. in the spotlight tonight, malala lives. jack, you're a little boring. boring. boring. [ jack ] after lauren broke up with me, i went to the citi private pass page and decided to be...not boring. that's how i met marilyn... giada... really good. yes! [ jack ] ...and alicia. ♪ this girl is on fire [ male announcer ] use any citi card to get the benefits of private pass. more concerts, more events, more experiences.

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malala lives. she is clinging life in intensive care in a pakistan hospital tonight after saying this. >> education, if it is in home, school or any place. this is our request to all world that save our schools, save our world, save our pakistan, save our swat. >> our nbc producer in the region told us just a few minutes ago malala remains in satisfactory condition after being shot by the taliban on her

school bus. a team moved her to a better hospital where she continues to breathe with a ventilators. they have estimated her chance of survival at 50 to 70%. doctors say the next 48 hours will be critical. people across pakistan observed friday as a day of prayer for malala and her two friends who were also injured in the gun fire in tuesday's attack. and last night, a consul of 50 religious clerics issued a fatwah against the attackers. they have reportedly identified two gun men behind the shooting but they are still at large. the taliban, pakistan, still vows to kill malala or her father, both of whom simply want girls in pakistan to have the right to an education.

when asked what her name meant, malala once said, probably a hero, like the afghan heroine malala. i want to be a social activist and an honest politician like her. tonight, hero is exactly what malala has become in pakistan and around the world. joining me now, an msnbc contributor, author and middle east expert. i'm so struck by the reaction in pakistan over this, especially the reaction among some in the religious community. >> this is the first time, actually. this is the first time that the religious community, the civil society come out and denounce an act of violence like this. remember, a year ago exactly, the taliban in afghanistan and in pakistan, in the swat valley

where malala live, put women outside and shot her in front of hundreds of men simply because she was accused of betraying her husband and being free sexually. this is a major issue with the women in pakistan and afghanistan. education is not granted the way it's granted here. how can we ever think there would be durable peace in these areas without people who have access to education. years ago you used to say you open a school, you close a jail. with that idea, one little girl is more threatening to the taliban today than the pakistani army. the pan stanny often they flirt with these groups and they close an eye on them and they let them govern certain areas. even the americans were protesting more than once say they give them actual information, they give them funds and very often they don't take care of the protection of

the civil society in these areas. we have to understand that in the last ten years, americans spent $20 billion only in pakistan. 80% of that budget went directly to the army. 170 million went to education. what we are doing in these countries, we have to think that our policy is about building armies. not about building societities. what malala wanted was to build a civil society that lead to democratization of the place. and lead to the army be the institution that flirts continuously with the taliban. >> we saw her the other night when i first talked about this in a video with richard holbrook where she was asking for more help with education. and it couldn't be clearer that the long-term need there is going to be addressed more through education money than it is going to be addressed through

military spending there through drone strikes or any of those things that are aimed at some kind of temporary fix of a problem. >> look. she's right and she's so young and so innocent. it breaks my heart to think that a little girl like this is more threatening to the tal bans, that they have to issue a frkts -- fatwaw to send somebody to kill her. there's a war between the extremists and the moderates and who is the one that set up for woman. and it become a major issue. how to control your body and how to control your brain. it's about controlling the society. once you dominate that, you have the voters coming to you. what are the option for a girl in that area of that education, to marry at the age of 13 or 14? to becomes a prostitute or to be manipulated by fan attic religious. we can do, for example, is finance schools.

this is the only way we can be safe here and they can be safe here. >> thank you for joining me. >> thank you. coming up, a voter who appeared in the caucuses turned out to be an actress playing a part. and next in the rewrite, why the rules of presidential debates need to be rewritten to emphasize the very important fact that we are not electing a debater in chief. we are electing a president. [ male announcer ] alka-seltzer plus presents the cold truth. i have a cold, and i took nyquil, but i'm still stubbed up. [ male announcer ] truth is, nyquil doesn't unstuff your nose. what? [ male announcer ] it doesn't have a decongestant. no way. [ male announcer ] sorry. alka-seltzer plus fights your worst cold symptoms plus has a fast-acting decongestant to relieve your stuffy nose.

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these could be signs of rare but serious side effects. ♪ is your cholesterol at goal? talk to your doctor about crestor. [ female announcer ] if you can't afford your medication, astrazeneca may be able to help. is it important to you that a presidential candidate be witty? is it important that he be quick on his feet? is it important to you that a presidential candidate be a really, really good memorizer?

well, all of those things are tested in presidential debates. and not one of them, not one of them matters in the job of being president of the united states. that's next on the rewrite. ah. fire bad! just have to fire roast these tomatoes. this is going to give you a head start on your dinner. that seems easier [ female announcer ] new progresso recipe starters. five delicious cooking sauces you combine with fresh ingredients to make amazing home-cooked meals.

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wing" in 2005. i'm going to show you the clip of the first couple of minutes of the episodes. and you'll have to bear with seeing some of the opening credits floating through the scene. >> don't worry about getting everything in every answer. we can fill in the blanks with the press. remember two-minute answers followed by one-minute rebuttals. moderator's option to allow a 30 second rebuttaltor a but the al. >> stupid rules. one minute, 30 seconds. what can you say in 30 seconds. >> why the hell do we agree to them? >> because they protect you. >> no they don't. they make me feel stiff. >> be yourself. don't forget to smile. >> i'm telling you. >> you have no idea what this feels like. >> he's got no answer to how he's going to pay for his tax cuts. he's going to run the clock out

on that one. if you get into a jam use a paragraph from your stump speech. >> that was the great ron silver and janine garafalo saying what every presidential debater is told when they are going into these debates. when they have the strict rules when they had 60 seconds clock and the 30 seconds for rebuttal, the yellow lights you have ten seconds left, the red lights means you have no time left. those rules were there because the campaigns negotiated those rules so that the candidates could hide behind them. as some of you may recall, alan alda's character stopped and proposed junking those rules so they could have a real debate. jimmy smits's character agreed. a real, debate, one of the members of the presidential

debate commission quoted that phrase to me privately last night after the debate in kentucky. a real debate, he said proudly, and with a wink about what we had just seen. that was his way of acknowledging me "the west wing"'s contribution to those debates. some on the commission tried to do this in 2008, but the campaigns resisted this year. the commission insisted and so we've seen something much closer to real debates with no red lights and much less moderator control of what you get to hear. but in the seven years since i wrote that "west wing" script, my thinking has moved far beyond just getting red of the red

lights. there is much more that we need to rewrite in the debate rules. first, candidates should be allowed to bring notes. they should be allowed to bring giant briefcases full of notes and "forensic files" and memos, anything they want to consult during the debate. these debates are about finding the best president, not the best memorizer. if it's a memorizer you want, then kevin klein or any other american-born actor who has learned all 1,495 lines of hamlet, the biggest part shakespeare ever wrote, deserves your vote. the debates now put candidates through ridiculous memorization tests that have nothing to do with the job of doing president. there will always be staff present to brief the president on whatever he or she needs to remember or know, which is why, to return to the protocol of

senators debating in the chamber, each candidate should be allowed at least one staff member to sit beside the candidate throughout the debate. it is not even slightly districting to senate debates to have a staff member sitting beside the senator as you see every day on c span handing the senator what is about to say. i used to be one of those people and some friends of mine who were watching on c span didn't even notice me. that's how invisible staff can be in government. but they are absolutely essential in government. the president is never alone with a decision, and you would never want him to be. candidates alone on the debate stage, foster a fiction where the presidency is a form of tennis in a business suit where you stand out there and do it all alone.

another debate commissioner who i've known for decades told me last night that he thinks the candidates should get the questions in advance. i hadn't thought of that one myself, but as soon as i heard it, i agreed with him. in most presidencies there will not be one instance, not one in four years in office, where a president has to think on his feet in the instant about a policy decision. nor would you want him to. you want a president to carefully consider every governing decision, to take as much time as it takes to make the best decision. to give more thought to and seek more advice on things he or she is not sure about. what we should want to hear from presidential candidates is a careful, considered position, a response they've had time to think about. the candidates' best possible reply to the question.

if audiences know that the candidates have the questions ahead of time, the standards we use to judge a good answer will be higher, much, much higher. we will have a right to expect much more. today, a presidential candidate would be howled off the stage by the news media if the candidate said i'd like to think about that a little more, study it and get back to you on that. but that is in fact what presidents tell senators and others they meet with in the oval office all the time, and it is always received as a perfectly reasonable and prudent presidential response. but we don't televise oval office meetings or any other real business of governing so the public and the news media for the most part have no real idea of how governing is done and who does it well.

then, that same news media presents presidential debates and instantly tells us who woven and who lost in the contest that is always judged more on style than on substance. post-debate pundit analysis always rewards wit as if it is a presidential job requirement. but wit has no value in the situation room. who do you want in the situation room? the funniest guy? the best memorizer? or the most thoughtful and careful and deliberative decision maker? in the news coverage that immediately follows the presidential debates, the analysis which some of you may have noticed i for one am a bit shy about offering because i think about preparing for what i've just seen, that post-debate analysis, all too often loses sight of the most important

fact. that debate audiences should remember. we are not electing debater in chief. we are electing a commander in chief.

>> we have no jobs. we have no health care. probably going is to get divorced -- >> i really want to help. >> i do believe in you, but we need answers. we need jobs and we need health

care. i'm sorry. i really at the end of my rope. >> i understand i certainly hope and pray for you. that's why i'm running, i want to help people like yourself. god be with you. >> it feels like my whole world is falling apart. please, if you win and go on to washington, d.c., save the families of america. >> that was a scene captured by abc news on the trail at the beginning of this year on the night of the iowa caucuses which mitt romney was falsely reported to have won that night when only eight votes separated mitt romney and rick santorum. as it happened a couple of weeks later we could report rick santorum won that night. the romney victory was not the only falsehood we delivered that night. here's how abc news presented that woman's plea to mitt romney.

>> i wanted to show you a moment here earlier today, a supporter approaching romney and saying if you are elected, if you're sent to washington, you've got to do something about the jobs. she doesn't have one, her husband does not have one and neither of them have health care. here's what she said to the former governor. >> please, if you win, if you go on to washington, d.c. >> so moving. >> yes, so moving. so moving and so real. and i mean real in the sense of the work of a great actress being real. because a great actress does not fake emotion on screen. a great actress feels the emotion that she conveys on screen. the emotion is real. a great actress feels that emotion on demand take after take if necessary. feels that emotion on demand not just in front of the other players in the scene, but a dispassionate film crew trying to capture this emotion. >> it turns out a film crew

making a movie was capturing the same scene that abc news captured, but the film crew knew that the woman in the scene was not janine wilson, a housewife from des moines, iowa. she was an actress and writer who was improvising her way across iowa. >> we have no jobs. and we have no hope here. i'm probably going to get divorced because of this. >> i'm sorry. >> everything is falling apart in our lives. >> i really want to help. i really want to help. >> i do believe in you, but we need answers. we need jobs and we need health care. sorry. i really i'm at the end of my rope. >> joining me now is the star of janine from des moines which opens today. jane, i love that abc film crew big footed your crew out of the way and got a better shot of you than your own crew did. and by the way.

abc, anybody would have foulen for what you were doing. that could easily just have been nbc news. you fooled a lot of reporters out there on the trail. >> yeah. >> you talked to a reporter who you went to high school with and she didn't recognize you? >> no. >> you're from iowa. >> yes, i'm originally from iowa, ames, iowa. she was in high school with me and she came up to me at a ron paul rally, before i could duck away and she started asking me questions. and my name is so similar i thought i told her my name, something might jog. but it's been a long time since i was in high school. >> we've got to take a look at you with michele bachmann. >> i called our doctor, the primary care and he will not see us without insurance.

i honestly don't know where we're supposed to go. what are we supposed to do? >> it goes back to the fact that we've got to have a pro-growth economy. we have to. because to have health care you have to have a job, you have to have a job to be able to pay for it. and your husband with trucking it's very difficult now for truckers to make a go of it. >> there's no goods. >> and the other thing is the transportation cost. the day that president obama came into office, gasoline was a $1.79 a gallon. now look at the price. >> he made that go up? >> yeah. yeah. >> i love this movie and i don't know what this movie is. it is not a documentary. it is not a comedy. it is more of a drama than that. the only artistic precursor that comes to mind is borat. is an actor playing something he isn't and finding real people out there in the world.

>> i think it is dissimilar in borat in that it's a lot more serious. >> absolutely. >> the director loves to call it a wopark fiction and part reality, just like politics. the we started in spring of 2011 and shot for nine months. we had an idea of the story arc we wanted for janine. we wanted her to be a person of realities. over the course, she loses her job and health care and goes through a lot of trials and tribulations. we had that story in mind and leading up to the caucuses and captured the candidates as we could capture them. >> and it opens tonight. the film is called "janine from des moines". >> thanks for joining us.